


silent knights do sing

by ballad



Category: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: F/M, Mutual Pining, Poetry, Post-Canon, Slow Burn, bonding by means of cat parenting, bonus: my take on zelda's short hair
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:53:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25686106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ballad/pseuds/ballad
Summary: He can fight well, but he is no scholar—not like Zelda. Zelda, his best friend, the cleverest, most brilliant person he knows. Zelda, who grew up on books the way Link grew up with a sword in his hand.But they’ve fought Ganon and won, and there’s so much to do, now— to learn, to try in new ways. Link thinks there is no harm in reading Zelda’s books—in learning about the world he lives in beyond simply living in it.Reading her books turns into an interest in poetry, for he can’t help being stirred by old Hyrulian sonnets, more so than any other texts.His unexpected newfound interest in poetry turns into an exploration into writing some, for the hell of it. He isn’t very good at it—no, they’re not good poems. But they are sincere, if nothing else.Of course, he’d never show Zelda his poetry. Not when so much of it is about her.
Relationships: Link/Zelda (Legend of Zelda)
Comments: 181
Kudos: 785





	1. PART I.

When Zelda hears Link has his own house in Hateno Village, her eyebrows raise delicately. But she smiles, still.

“I should get used to being constantly surprised by you,” she says, more to herself than anything, and Link busies himself with loading the horse-saddles, willing his ears not to go red.

There is, of course, much to pack. Zelda is transporting as many of her books as she possibly can from the castle to his house. They may have to take multiple journeys. Privately, Link doesn’t really mind. Books will fill up his empty house; make it more alive than mere walls and weapons.

Link is unsure how to _be_ around Zelda, if he’s being honest—he’s followed her voice and guidance, all this time, and a hundred years after the start of everything, they’re here now, long past where they expected to be.

She’s wonderful. She’s a lot more bright-eyed and _alive_ than Link ever really expected. After her century in the castle he expected some resemblance of goddesshood, of serene power. Not someone his age. Not someone who hums as she organises her books on a checklist, not someone who trips over rocks while exclaiming at the migration patterns of birds above. She’s similar to how she was in his few, scattered memories of her—but something subtle about her is tempered, too. Stronger, in a way. 

Link wonders what the future holds for them. It’s hard to think about when there’s so much _history_ they’re swimming in, always pulling forward from. The realisation that Zelda might have felt—all this time, might have felt alone, miserable, weighed down for decades and decades—it makes something in him ache.

He tries not to think about it, and instead argues with Zelda over how necessary it _really_ has to be to saddle the books in alphabetical order.

(He loses that argument.)

* * *

In Hateno, it seems to Link that Zelda is suddenly far less sure of herself. She’s among _people_ , now, among villagers who smile warmly at her and hold her hands as they thank her. Zelda always gets flustered as she stutters back something diplomatic. She takes to barely leaving Link’s house, reading and writing instead. Link lets the subject be.

A month passes, then another, and though Link never asks directly about it, to his relief Zelda seems to regain some ease at existing in real time, now. They travel, sometimes, and their journeys to all corners of Hyrule are undertaken in the kind of comfortable companionship Link had never actually let himself hope for. It’s equally natural when they’re both in quiet moods, or when Zelda wants to talk away the hours on horseback. Link really does like it—having someone else there, and not just him—a lot more than he expected he would. 

Zelda’s a good travel companion.

They travel to Zora’s Domain, where they meet a grinning Sidon who, of course, charms both Link and Zelda effortlessly into accepting far too generous a number of gifts. Link can’t help feeling pleased at how well Zelda and Sidon get along, in how they reminisce together.

They travel to Gerudo Valley, and Riju eyes Zelda with interest and insists on taking her on a tour of the valley. Link accompanies them—“I’m her bodyguard,” he insists when they try to stop him, and Zelda gets a strange expression on her face that she tries to school away. 

They travel to Kakariko Village, to meet a beaming Impa and awed Paya. They travel to Rito Village, where Zelda takes such a liking to Kass’s songs she insists he writes them down for her. They travel to Tarrey Town, to Kokiri Forest, to Goron City, to Lake Hylia.

Before Link knows it, half a year has passed. 

They are back in Hateno Village, one chilly evening, and Link is trying to get a fire going. Winter’s approaching, cold as anything, and he’s been doing all sorts of jobs for hire to buy enough blankets and other essentials. Zelda has a job at the tech lab under Purah, busy with research, and she’ll be returning home soon. Link would rather have the house warm by the time she does. 

When Zelda steps in and shrugs off her coat, Link glances at her to give her a small smile—then gapes, his gaze caught.

Zelda’s hair is short, and reaches her chin, now. It looks lovely.

She says, in answer to his unformed questions, “It was getting annoying, with how long it was. Purah cut it for me.”

“Ah,” manages Link. He’s still staring, he belatedly realises.

Zelda looks self-conscious. Fumbling, she tries for humour. “Did she do a worse job than I realised? Perhaps I could have considered asking someone else before I rushed into it. But she offered, so—” 

Link blurts, “It looks very nice—,” and then he forces himself to be still and not look away. He can feel his face reddening. Zelda, surprised, blushes slightly, too.

“I see,” says Zelda. She is always the first to composure, in moments like this. “Thank you, Link.”

Link turns towards the pantry, trying to think of what he and Zelda can cook for dinner, but he’s still flustered and can barely read the jars. The jars full of specimens and food, which Zelda had insisted on labelling one afternoon. They are halved with labels of her neat penmanship and his own scratchy writing. He stares at them, trying to really look at the jars, and not back at Zelda.

Zelda clears her throat. “I—I have a present for you.”

At this, Link turns back to her.

She has a book in her hand.

As he carefully accepts it from her and opens it, he realises its pages are blank. He looks up at her, and she explains, “You’ve had so many adventures—but you talk very little of them. Perhaps, someday, you could write of them. I know plenty in the future would—” she avoids eye contact, looking to the fireplace, “—would find your stories wonderful, Link.”

He takes that in, somewhat agape.

“Zelda,” he says, unable to hold back the full warmth of his voice. She looks back at him, startled. He can feel himself smiling, delighted, and doesn’t try to contain it. “Thank you.” 

He says it as sincerely as he can, hoping she’ll know what this means to him. “Thank you,” he repeats, holding the book tight in his hands.

There is a pause. Zelda is close to, but not quite smiling back—she is studying Link as though he is the most important thing in the world, and she is committing his face to memory.

“I’m glad you like it,” she says, at last, as though she is forcing herself not to say more, not to say anything else.

But Link, warm and pleased in a way he can’t explain, smiles on at her. “We might as well have dinner, now,” he says, still happy as he carefully tucks the book under his arm. Zelda nods.

The moment—however it could be described—passes. Their dinner is delicious.

* * *

He keeps the book she gifted him carefully on the table by his bed. Zelda’s bed is on the upper floor while his bed is on the ground floor, close to the pantry. 

Too close. He realises the book could easily be stained, spilled on, if he leaves it by his bed. He picks it up hastily, holding it to his chest, and considers where the safest, most sacred place to keep it could be.

He ends up walking around the house, frowning. Nowhere is quite right, quite good enough, to store the gift.

It occurs to him to go upstairs—which has now primarily become Zelda’s space, admittedly. There are shelves upstairs, though, full of books, perfect for his one blank book.

He climbs the stairs. Zelda’s at her desk. If she’s surprised to see him, she says nothing, simply continuing to read whatever book she’s engrossed in.

He walks along the shelves, considering how the books are arranged in alphabetical order. They all have lengthy titles with grand sorts of words.He’s a bit out of his depth here.

Reluctantly, he turns to Zelda, and as though sensing something, she glances up at him. 

“I need a place to store this book,” he tries to explain.

Zelda considers this. Very carefully, she says, “Would you like me to store it for you with my books?”

Link is about to say, _I don’t know_ , when it dawns on him that the odd, careful tone of Zelda’s voice is hiding a slight twinge of hurt.

She thinks he doesn’t like his present, and isn’t planning on using it.

_Oh no,_ Link thinks, because that isn’t it at all. 

“Actually,” Link says, a bit too loud, “I just remembered. I was planning on building a shelf above my bed, so I’ll keep it there.”

“A shelf above your bed,” Zelda repeats.

“I can keep other books there, too,” Link says, without thinking.

Zelda’s expression shifts to a sort of dawning clarity. “To read! Oh, it never even occurred to me that you’d be interested in books! And I haven’t even shared my books with you, all this time. I thought you weren’t interested in reading.”

“I can read,” he defensively says.

Zelda eagerly agrees, “You should! Read, I mean. I can think of so many books you might like. I’ll lend you some. The shelf is a good idea.”

“Yes,” Link awkwardly says. Zelda’s standing, now, and passing her hand along the spines of her books as she scans the titles. “I’ll go build the shelf,” he says, and Zelda smiles at him.

“I’ll lend you some good ones when it’s built,” she says, and despite himself, he finds himself smiling back.

* * *

Zelda lends Link five books, once the shelf is built and dealt with. They include an encyclopedia of Hyrulian flora, a history of local practices of horse-management and tending, an old documentation of Sheikah practices, a tome of Hyrule’s history, and—to his surprise—a book of old, archaic love sonnets.

He certainly understands why she chose the first four books. The fifth, he can’t quite wrap his head around. Zelda probably picks up on his uncertainty, because she explains, “I always think reading _only_ non-fiction all the time must be exhausting. You can consider the poetry something to read for fun, when you aren’t in the mood for the other books.”

“I see,” he says. And then, not wanting to sound ungrateful, he says, “Thank you, Zelda. I appreciate this a lot. We can go back to the castle and bring back more books in the spring, too.”

She all but beams at him. “That’d be wonderful. I hope you enjoy these books! All the others in my library are yours to read, too, of course. I just thought these would be a good place to start for you.”

He trusts her judgement. There and then, he decides to read the books carefully, twice or thrice, so that all the knowledge in them sticks in his head and he doesn’t have to borrow them again from her. That night, with his candlelight flickering, he begins to read the first.

* * *

Winter is Hateno Village is only slightly short of downright freezing, and other than the necessary excursions out to see to the horses and bring back more firewood and whatnot, he spends a lot of time indoors.

Zelda’s busy at her desk often, deeply ensnared in her books and theories. Link wishes she’d come downstairs—there’s no fireplace upstairs, and it’s draftier there. But he says nothing, and tries to keep the fire downstairs lit constantly, at least. 

He takes to regularly asking Zelda, “I’m making myself some ginger tea. Would you also want some?” even when he doesn’t particularly want tea himself, but doesn’t know how else to give her hot tea. Perhaps in the spring he could roam the forests and find himself enough deerskin for a hot water bottle—it would come in handy the next winter, he grimly thinks.

And that thought, that idea that the winter next year they’ll still be here, in this house, and neither of them are going anywhere—it makes him smile. He keeps it to himself, and doesn’t think it _too_ often. He savours it, instead, and it warms him as much as the fires he keeps lit.

He reads the books Zelda gifted him often, at all times of the day. Lying in his bed wearing woollens and gloves, with tea next to him, flipping through a book in the pale morning light—it’s a foreign sort of comfort to him, the kind Zelda would know far better than him. The comfort of taking your time with a book, instead of being forced to use your weapons to protect yourself. It is strange to think he can lie here, and read, and there is nothing out there too urgent to fight. He knows this odd sense of peace may not last—it probably won’t, knowing he is a knight at his core. But he will savour this odd, unfamiliar phase, nonetheless.

In truth, Link doesn’t follow Zelda’s advice of interspersing reading the non-fiction and poetry together. He reads all the non-fiction books first, thoroughly, carefully, multiple times, before he finally approaches the love poetry. He could, of course, not read the last book, and ask for new books, instead. But it wouldn’t really feel right to ignore something she obviously picked out for him.

He knows it’s silly to avoid a book of love poems—but maybe he’s saved that book for last because he knows Zelda has read that book and loved it, judging by its dog eared pages and underlined lines and cracked spine. There is something uncomfortably intimate about the thought of reading that book, and knowing he will constantly picture her reading it, constantly wonder at her thoughts on the different verses. But then again, she wouldn’t have recommended it to him unless she’d have been perfectly alright with him reading it. Perhaps to Zelda it is a sort of friendship, companionship; to enjoy poetry together in an academic sort of way. He doesn’t know.

He could be overthinking it. He chides himself, _Link, you are many things, and a fool, perhaps, but you are not an overthinker. Just read the book once and return it to Zelda. Just read it._

So he starts the book, one night, when Zelda is asleep, and his own candle only likely has about fifteen minutes of light left to it.

He reads one poem, then another. They aren’t as bad to read as he feared. They do require effort and rereading on his part to understand. But they don’t feel like a waste of time, or anything like that. They’re interesting. And something he hadn’t realised, but likes, is that the poems are not all the same in their atmosphere—some are delicate, some wry, some yearning, some utterly sad, others serene.

One sonnet in particular is just shy of lascivious—it makes almost-innuendos without quite being obscene, and reading it makes his cheeks redden. It’s written good, though, even he can see that. 

_One more,_ he thinks, _and then I’ll sleep._

But that plan doesn’t work, because his candle burns out while he’s still halfway through the poem he meant to be the last, and he doesn’t want to leave it halfway read—so he lights another candle, and then ends up reading ten more pages.

It is late when he closes the book and carefully puts it back with his other borrowed books. 

He lies back down, the room dark with only a hint of moonlight filtering through where the curtains don’t touch. Unbidden, before he can stop, he thinks of Zelda. Nothing in particular, except how she’d sleepily called goodnight to him an hour ago. 

Link thinks of everyone else in Hyrule’s history, telling each other _good night,_ _good morning_ , _here i am,_ _here you are_ —and maybe some of those people had sonnets in their hearts, too, and maybe some simply lived their own poetry instead of reading it. 

The history of the world, he realises, is full of love. He has this strange, unexpected thought, all of a sudden: that reading love poems, for him, had been a bit like reading a bit of that private history, that kind of history so integral to the world, the kind nobody really talked about.

And Zelda’s still on his mind, and he doesn’t know why, but he feels fond and warm thinking of her—and something he doesn’t know how to put to words. There is something still and quiet and flickering inside him that he doesn’t really understand. Maybe he doesn’t need to—the feeling is delicate enough that it could dissolve if he inspected it too much. So he doesn’t.

He goes to sleep, and the next night, in the quiet, late hours, he reads more.

* * *

“Did you like them?” Zelda absently asks, as Link places the five stacked books on the edge of her desk. 

“Yes,” Link cautiously says. He hopes Zelda won’t ask him for his opinions on the individual books.

Except Zelda does just that. She brightens. “Really! That’s marvellous. Which was your favourite?”

In what he hopes is a normal voice, he says, “A tie between the horse book and the poetry.” It’s almost the truth—he’d liked the horse-tending guide a lot. But he’d liked the poetry the most; more than he’d expected. He’d ended up reading the book twice over.

Zelda looks surprised. Almost embarrassed, if Link wouldn’t know any better. “Ah. The poetry. I didn’t know what you’d think of it. I wasn’t sure if I was right to recommend it.”

“I like,” Link searches for how to word it, “—I like it when people are honest. When they say what they mean. I thought the, the poems were nice. They’re not what I’m used to. But,” he remembers, and smiles, despite himself, “then again, before we fought Ganon, I delivered love letters for some villagers once or twice. It was almost funny. You wouldn’t believe how many people like the girl at the inn nearby.”

Zelda stares. Link knows he doesn’t usually say that many sentences in one go. But it’s Zelda. He’s sure she won’t _mind_ , per se, that he’s oddly willing to try conveying things right now.

A clattering of noise from outside the house, near the shed, interrupts them. He hears his stabled horse neigh, upset. 

“Hmm,” says Link. “I’ll go look at that.”

“I’ll look, too,” Zelda says, getting up. 

Link thinks to himself that if it’s a beast—a stray moblin in the village, perhaps, or worse—it’ll be harder for him to protect Zelda if she accompanies him outside the house.

Reluctantly, he says, “If you wish.”

He grabs his sword, and they duck out the door.

It’s still cold, even if the snow is beginning to just slightly lessen. In the stable set up by the frozen creek and apple tree, there’s a slight mess. A metal bucket rolls in half-arcs on the ground, hay is scattered in clumps on the snow, and his horse is shifting its hooves in annoyance. 

“Lanya,” he says, cooing to his horse. “What happened?”

Lanya eyes him accusingly, shaking her head with a huff. Her dark winter coat, usually gleaming, has bits of hay stuck to it. To his relief, she seems more irritated and huffy than afraid.

He glances at Zelda. She’s studying the mess thoughtfully. She looks towards the other edge of the creek, at a distance. He follows her gaze.

An enormous, grizzled cat stares at them, its tail swaying as it crouches. Its body is chunky, fur matted; one of its eyes has a deep, reddened wound on it. It must have been in fights—perhaps some beast tried to catch and eat it, and it had a narrow escape from that fate before finding its way here.

“Poor thing,” Zelda says, reflecting Link’s thoughts.

They end up offering it milk. It follows them inside, and Zelda applies balm to its wounds while Link holds it with his gloves on, unwilling to get some sort of disease from being scratched.

Eventually the cat falls asleep by the fire, content and fed.

“Do you think she’ll stay?” he asks Zelda.

Her mouth twitches as she looks at the sleeping cat. “I have a feeling she might. What shall we name her?”

“You choose.”

Zelda considers this. “Truffle,” she decides. “She’s just as round and brown.”

“I miss truffles,” Link woefully says. They ran out a week ago. Spring can’t come fast enough.

Zelda laughs. “Then my choice of name is perfect.”

Link can’t help thinking, looking at Zelda as she considers the cat, _have you chosen something perfect by staying here, in this house, in this village, with me? One day, you may yet be queen. One day, you may leave._

_Is my version of perfect the same as yours?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments are deeply welcome! my tumblr is @sheherazade.


	2. PART II.

Truffle, the cat, becomes a permanent fixture in the household. She’s odd in her behaviour—on some days, she may curl up against Zelda’s legs and stay there, but on more days than most she’ll ignore Zelda—Zelda, who feeds and tends to her the most— in favour of trailing behind Link and mewling at him for attention.

Link finds it rather funny. Zelda doesn’t understand it at all, though, and seems puzzled their ridiculous cat tends to prefer Link to her, more often than not. 

“Could it be,” she slowly asks, as they sit at the table and eat their dinner, “that she senses how old I am? That she senses that I’ve been out of time, and the part of Hylia’s power that’s in me unsettles her?”

Link says nothing and tries not to chuckle. It’s only a silly, erratic cat, after all, and Zelda worries too much. He can’t help his fond amusement at the question, though, and it probably shows on his face.

But then—Zelda, still not looking at him, grimaces to herself.

“I suppose it could also be that you are better with living creatures than me,” she says. Her tone is sad, all of a sudden, and—oh. Looking at her, Link stops smiling as his heartbeat slows down. Oh. He hadn’t realised this had affected her in all seriousness. Hadn’t realised Zelda cared about this because it symbolised something else, possibly bigger, to her. 

“Maybe,” Zelda continues, distracted and lost in her thoughts, “it’s because to Truffle, I must smell like books and nothing else, and you smell like wilderness.”

Link works through that. He’s never been bold enough to smell Zelda close, but he’s _positive_ she must smell different from a typical book. And for her to say he smells like the wild… rings oddly poetic, resonant. Like a thought deep-seated, kept secret, revealed by chance.

He doesn’t say that. “I what?”

Zelda flushes. “Yesterday was the first day of spring, and you spent all day and half the night outside, gathering food and hunting! You would have slept in the forest had I not told you to come home for dinner. You just—you love nature. You _know_ the land because it’s a part of you. You love Hyrule’s geography in a way I don’t know if I can. And,” she hesitates, “animals trust you. People take a liking to you. I don’t know how the world always seems to be your friend. I sometimes wonder if you even _know_ that such ease—is difficult for others.”

“I—“ Link doesn’t know what to say, and he’s conscious of his pulse going a little louder now. He veers back to the safe subject, knowing he’ll need time to think over her words after this conversation. “I don’t think Truffle cares. She likes us both. She knows how much she owes to you.”

Zelda’s still looking plaintive, in an unaware sort of way, the way she only lets herself be around Link. Thinking about it, he realises she takes pains to be the face of measure and grace around those she doesn’t know well—but with Link, she seems to feel more comfortable in acknowledging what troubles her. In being a person, rather than a figure.

“She loves you more than me,” she says, melancholy. 

Link, staring at her, gets this instinct that there’s something else on her mind, too—for when Zelda is aching about something, she tends to not talk about the real things, and appears overly concerned with smaller things. Link has some gleam, some sliver of knowing, all of a sudden, that the fixation on their cat is an aspect, a surface, of something larger that Zelda has not spoken of.

Link doesn’t know what he’s doing, but he says, certain, at least, of the importance of trying to say something—“No.”

She looks up.

Link says, his voice sounding faraway and _insistent_ and foreign to him, “Zelda, love’s not a competition. Even _I_ know you don’t just measure it, like a scientist. Truffle just likes us, right now. She barely even trusts us. But in a few months or years, after she knows us longer, she’ll probably love us _both_. And once she does, there won’t be a favourite, between us. Cats take time, though. That’s what. We can—trust that things just take time. Everything, I mean.”

A pause.

Zelda says, “Oh.”

Link’s blushing something terrible, and looks down at his soup. Who is he, to talk of love like this? To talk to _Zelda_ like this?

He dares to sneak a look at Zelda’s face again, only to find her studying him.

She nods, to herself, like she’s understanding something, and she exhales. A formless sort of weight seems to leave her. And then—her eyes crinkle, and the corner of her mouth curls up—

—And something about that simple, unexpected gesture strikes Link deeply; makes his heartbeat stutter, his blood freeze and burn in seconds. He doesn’t know why.

“I think you’re right,” she says to him, her voice lighter. “And I think that makes sense. And,” she smiles, smiles at _him_ , “I think you should give yourself more credit for understanding things that I may analyse too much.”

Link’s throat is dry. He thinks, _I don’t understand as much as I wish I did. You make me wonder, a lot, and I don’t always have the answers I want most._

There is silence. They hold each other’s eyes. Zelda seems calm. Her shoulders have straightened; the tight set of her jaw has relaxed. Meanwhile, Link is holding onto his spoon for dear life, his brain blanking. He wonders if she can see something in him that he doesn’t. 

But then again, nothing is more important to him than the normalcy between them, the comfort of their patterns. Link _cannot_ spoil their cadence, and he knows he needs to turn back from some precipice and get a grip now, in these next few seconds, or something will forever be changed. 

He forces himself to say, “Thank you. By the way, your soup must be getting cold.” 

Zelda looks down at her bowl in surprise. “Oh!”

Link, shaking his head, gets up quickly to go warm her dinner. 

* * *

He had spent the last stages of winter reading more of Zelda’s books, to the point where she’d stopped directly loaning them to him and made it clear he was welcome to take any book he wanted from her shelves.

Link had ended up reading a lot of poetry, more than other books, without really being able to explain why. Zelda had said nothing, though, as though it was ordinary— as though it was perfectly normal to her that her barely literate knight would develop an interest in classic verse, and ask her the meaning of intricate words often enough she’d shown him a dictionary.

He’d kept his blank book, the gift from Zelda, close enough to touch—and he’d held it often, traced his fingers over the cover, and wondered what he could write in it that would be worth marring its pristine pages.

Come spring, he’d re-begun his old habits of hunting beasts and doing scattered jobs for hire. Link spends his days outdoors, now, and has less time to read.

He’d assumed that being cooped up indoors was the only reason he’d been reading in the winter. But now, the days are sunny and warm and full of life, and there’s so much to do—and he _still_ sometimes finds himself reading in the evenings, during the hours he isn’t wandering around Hyrule’s forests and mountains or laying down in fields, counting the clouds. 

He’d never expected this—this _liking_ of reading from himself. He’d assumed it had to be one way of life or the other. Knights, he’d thought, were not meant to think. To know things.

But Link is only as much of a knight as Zelda is a princess—which is to say, both of them are people first. People capable of more than a singular trait, people more than symbolic figures in a fireside story.

So Link battles, and Link wanders, and sometimes, Link reads. He stops wondering why.

* * *

One night, shooting stars streak through the sky. They’re radiant, unearthly—and Zelda, of course, had expected them. Zelda, of course, had read about how they arrive every twenty-something years in her books, and had already known more about them than Link had understood from her earnest lectures on them. She’d had her telescope ready, had her cloak on in case it rained, and she and Link had ridden to some damp hill-peak, aiming to arrive late in the afternoon, in the name of taking thorough notes without missing anything.

Link had been very tired. He’d sprained his ankle the week before, falling from the roof of the Hateno tech lab, where Purah had asked him to set up some sort of rain-measuring contraption. His foot had still been somewhat sore, and Zelda had told him over and over that she’d be fine, and it was fine if he couldn’t accompany her— and he’d given her an impatient _look_ each time, and insisted on coming.

He’d supposed he could fall asleep once they reached their destination. He’s always been a light sleeper, and Zelda has, in the past, easily been able to wake him if needed.

But their journey had been delayed by the usual bridge having dangerously rotted over in the rainy season, resulting in the need for a different route. They’d arrived at the hill-peak by twilight, just in time for the first shooting stars to come into play.

Zelda, bursting with excitement, had jumped off her horse and fished out her telescope in a matter of seconds, and begun alternating between looking up through it and feverishly scribbling in her notebook.

So here they are now, and Link is not sleepy, anymore.

The shooting stars are so beautiful. Link lays down on their blanket over the grass and stares at them, and Zelda, sitting up next to him, gleams with delight.

“I didn’t think they’d be so—I’ve never seen them; I didn’t want to expect too much, but! Heavens, Link, they’re so—”

“I know,” he agrees.

They look on at the sky, strewn with stars parading on and on and _on_.

Something occurs to Link. A traveller had told him about it yesterday, and he isn’t sure if Zelda knows about it, if it’s a talked-about rather than written-about sort of folklore.

“You should make a wish,” he says to her.

Her expression shifts to surprise. She tears herself away from her telescope to look down at him. Without really thinking about it, he comfortably, contentedly lets himself grin in the darkness.

“That’s what you’re meant to do, with shooting stars,” he explains.

He isn’t looking at her; the stars are too bright and dizzying. He looks on at them and keeps grinning to himself stupidly. And when she speaks, her voice is quiet—not in a subdued way as much as the way it gets when the gears in Zelda’s mind are turning around too impossibly fast for him to follow.

“You should make a wish, then, too.”

“But I don’t need to. I’m fine, really.”

“Then _I’ll_ make one for you,” she stubbornly says, “and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Link grumbles, just to be stubborn right back, “I’ll make one for you too, then.”

“An exchange of wishes. How judicious.” 

He hears the humour in her voice, and bites his lip, trying not to laugh. A beat passes.

“They’re nearly over,” she says, quieter now, referring to the stars. “Now’s the time to wish.”

So Link stares at the stars, focusing on the slowest, least dizzying one with all his heart, and wishes. He wishes for Zelda’s happiness. The kind that sticks with you for a lifetime. The kind you earn, that never leaves you. For real, true joy to Zelda.

Because it doesn’t matter if she _does_ someday become queen. If she leaves Hateno, and marries a prince from a distant land, and returns to her rebuilt castle. Link has thought about it for months, and it becomes clear, crystallised to him there and then: that if she does leave their house in Hateno, does leave to be queen, he’ll still follow her, _because he is her knight,_ and he gave his sword to her, expecting nothing back. Hell, he’ll even protect whoever she marries, and protect whatever children she might someday have, too. Even if he’ll be alone, cut off from her; her knight in a different way. He won’t complain about it— because she is _Zelda_ , and because he would follow her to the ends of the earth—not for some cold notion of honour, not for the sake of keeping a promise—but because there isn’t anything else he wants as much as being by her side, whichever way it pleases her.

He’s breathless as he realises it all.

And then he tells her, “I made your wish.”

And she replies, “So did I, my friend.”

* * *

Something is different. Since the evening they looked at the shooting stars together, Link has felt—different. Better, maybe. He is innately steadier, now, in his assurance that he is not leaving Zelda’s side, regardless of the path she chooses.

One morning, he’s home, between jobs, with time to spare. Zelda’s out at the lab, and it’s only him and Truffle, comfortably resting under the apple tree by the house.

A stray thought crosses his mind: that this quiet day stretching before him now is the perfect time for him to attempt to write something in the journal Zelda had gifted him.

She, herself, writes all the time; Zelda goes through notebooks fast and always finds more. Maybe it’s because Link is so assured of the important thing now, of the fact that she’ll stay in his life as long as he remains her bodyguard—maybe it’s that comfort, despite how nothing has _technically_ changed, that makes him realise that perhaps he’s been too precious with his notebook. It’s meant to be _used_. He can write in it, and find more notebooks to follow once it finishes. Zelda would prefer that scenario to a blank book, unused.

The idea of today being the day he makes Zelda’s gift a real, used gift, and not a concept to fear, invigorates him. Truffle, resting in his lap as her tail curls, will be his silent companion to this odd venture. He picks her up as he gets up, carrying her into the house. He won’t borrow Zelda’s desk without asking—he’s fine with writing on the floor. He sets Truffle down on the patched quilt of his bed, finds himself some ink and a pen, and sits down cross-legged on the carpet. The first page of the open book faces him. It isn’t terrifying, this blank page—because while Link was busy fiddling with the inkpot and pen, he planned what to write.

A poem.

The thought is ridiculous enough to make him laugh. Link, hero of Hyrule, wielder of the master sword, now turned part-time poet. He has no eloquence, certainly, no grand vocabulary. He has no tendency towards wordiness, and he has never burst into tears at the sight of some beautiful flower, the way so many poets he’s read of appear to have. He has no book smarts, no knowledge of etymology and linguistics, no sense of rhyme, no sense of wit. There is a stark knowledge in him that he needn’t bother to even _hope_ he can write well.

He only has memories, and his own honesty, and that shall have to be enough.

Link rarely, if ever, takes himself seriously, and he knows this will be a good way to store a memory. No one besides him will ever read it, of course. And he is just reckless, impulsive enough today, to be brave enough to try at something he will be awful at.

He titles the page: _Shooting Star Gazing With My Friend._

Then he pauses, his hand hovering, and then, not wanting ink to spill onto the page, he quickly writes more.

The words come. He barely thinks, and suddenly, some minutes later, something in the _shape_ of a poem is drawn onto the page, in his chicken-scratchy handwriting.

_I saw them, and you saw them, too._

_We saw them and we were glad to._

_Your wish was a secret, and so was mine._

_But my wish was strange._

_Maybe…_

_the star I chose was particularly strong._

_When I wished for your lifelong happiness,_

_something else happened too,_

_and I found, in myself,_

_such peace. I knew._

_I knew I would never leave you._

_It seems stars, whether they work or not,_

_are good to look at, sometimes._

_And also, maybe, they have their own wishes._

_Everything seems to have wishes._

_But your happy life has a stronger chance at_

_happening, at happening for you,_

_because it’s not just of your interest,_

_but my aim, now, too._

_Two people focusing on one person’s joy_

_surely shall succeed._

_I hope so._

_End._

Link reads it over once.

He knows the words have no structure or rhyme. Nothing as elegant as a sonnet.

_But at least,_ he thinks, _it’s down on paper._

A mad, possibly hubristic sort of urge to write another one comes over him.

He waits for the ink to dry, and titles the next page, _What is a Princess, Really?_

_I don’t know._

_But the one I like best is very clever._

_She’s very kind._

_She likes to learn._

_And she gave away her life for her land,_

_gave away a hundred years of_

_her peace for everyone else’s,_

_and now, she is a queen,_

_and I wonder if she knows it._

_I am scared to tell her._

_But if she is a queen, then her knight_

_must be better than the knight_

_of a princess, of course._

_So I, too, must become braver._

_Also,_

_I think people see her and know:_

_she saved them once,_

_and will save them again,_

_in a different way, just by being_

_happy. By being smart._

_And me, a knight. I have no right to_

_define a princess._

_But I can tell you, from experience,_

_princesses are just like_

_the endangered Silent Princess flower._

_They become queens when you pluck them_

_and put them over a fire._

_Then they become strong elixirs,_

_that are like no other ingredient._

_It makes me so proud,_

_that Zelda is silent no longer,_

_and is a queen who sings to herself now,_

_and I think that as a knight,_

_I could ask for no better._

_End._

“Hmm,” says Link, staring at his second poem. It contains only the truth, of course. But as a poem, it meanders. He could rewrite it, he supposes. But maybe later.

Finally, he decides to write one last thing. Not a poem. A simple few sentences, almost a diary log, or a vow you’d carve into stone:

_Remember this forever._

_I know I will never leave Zelda, but remember why forever._

_Not because I am a knight, and she has my sword,_

_but because she is my best friend,_

_and because of the love I bear her._

This odd note to himself is written in almost a trance—and he realises, as he finishes, that the final line is true.

He loves Zelda; he has all this time, and he loves her in a way, he suddenly realises, might not be as simple as he’d assumed—might not be as platonic as the love of a _best friend,_ and nothing else.

Link gasps. The spell breaks; he suddenly feels far out of his depth, dangerously close to drowning. He had known it, but never worded it before, and—and he forces himself to breathe, and tries to tell himself this changes nothing.

But he closes the book, his hands shaking, and it echoes in his mind, long afterwards: _the love I bear her. The love I bear her._

* * *

“Link,” Zelda asks him, one morning, “Are you quite well?”

He is outside, practicing drills with his sword. He nods. 

Zelda hesitates. “Alright,” she says. “Alright.”

* * *

Link knows it cannot do to love her. Not like this.

He, as her bodyguard, has overstepped. 

And he _knows_ himself; knows he is no good at pretending. Distance, for a little while, is necessary; he cannot talk to her as casually as he used to.

It hurts her, he can tell—but this is for the best.

He is very, very quiet—guarded— around her, now. 

And he doesn’t open the diary she’d gifted him anymore. He can barely stand to look at it without guilt chilling him to the bone.

* * *

Truffle often eyes him, tail swishing, as though saying to him, _How silly you are._

Well, he has nothing to say to that.

One good thing happens, though: Truffle finally takes a liking to Zelda, mewing sweetly at her, spending all her time with her, these days. It’s as though the stupid cat has replaced Link as a companion to Zelda. But at least Zelda, in her hurt, probably appreciates Truffle’s newfound warmth.

Link says very, very little these days—it’s that old silence he was once used to, and stopped being used to. He spends his time not reading at all, anymore—only practicing his swordplay instead. Trying not to think.

But at night, in his dreams, it still echoes, still resonates: that the love he has for Zelda will take a long, long time, if ever, to fade.

How terrifying, this assurance of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> final chapter coming soon! your comments are deeply appreciated.


	3. PART III.

A hundred years ago, when she was once young, Zelda had grown—in a way so quiet, so solitary—with the barest, vaguest ideas of what friendship and companionship were meant to look like. 

Perhaps, she thinks, she is still young. If she is, then it is a different, tempered sort of youth. She may yet be young in terms of how little she truly has experienced, in the grand scheme of things. She does not feel ancient, no—not yet.

Zelda hadn’t had friends as a little girl, but she’d had Urbosa’s fondness. She’d had the pleasantries of the tutors she got along with. She’d had infrequent, warm words from her father, and the simpering compliments of cousins she saw twice a year. She’d had the shy smiles from the lady who dressed her, and she’d had the passing, respectful company of ambassadors from all across Hyrule. 

And it hadn’t been enough, none of it had, and she’d never expected any of it would change.

But then, oh, _then_ , she’d met Link. Link, whom she’d kept her distance from, smarted and grimaced at the thought of. Link, who she misjudged before she began to understand him. Before tolerating his presence became easier, before he proved his loyalty a hundred times over, and she realised, one day, that she’d grown to value his companionship above everyone else’s.

It is an old story, a hundred years old. The knight dies to protect his princess. The princess lives on and aches. Zelda had lost Link, a century ago, and lived with his loss, awake, aware. Wondering what would happen at the end of his slumber. 

She’d seen him wake from a distance, and she’d guided him like a stranger—out of respect for his absence of memory—and then, _then_ —

—she’d somehow _got him back_. She’d had the pleasure of his friendship like she’d barely ever had it before, in a hundred tiny, blooming ways. She’d let herself think of their tie to each other as an assurance. A promise. A gaze, held—for he never looked away from her, no, not once.

But maybe, Zelda thinks, she never _was_ meant to keep Link. He’s drifting away from her, and it stings, and it angers her, and she doesn’t know what to do in the face of this new reality: that she is losing him, again.

* * *

Zelda wakes in the middle of the night. She wakes tumultously, gasping for breath. She sits up instantly, ripping away her blanket, her fist clutching the fabric rough enough to tear it. Sleep never finds her graceful.

Truffle, nestled in blankets at the foot of her bed, lifts a sleepy eye to look at her. The sight of the cat reminds her to breathe.

Zelda rubs at her eyes. A nightmare, already fading. 

She exhales heavily, and looks at the window, gauging the darkness outside.

“Go back to sleep,” she tells Truffle. She puts her slippers and robe on, heading down the staircase. She means to make herself a cup of tea, as quietly as she can, without waking Link.

Link, who used to make tea for them both, the winter before. Tea that was always delicious, and warm, and different from the tea she made for herself. Zelda merely makes tea for herself out of a mundane need for a drink. When Link had made her tea, it had felt like a careful sort of gesture; it had tasted like a gift.

Zelda feels herself stiffen at the memory. She feels the shape and contours of that familiar, leaden heaviness in her. In the darkness, in the quiet of the night, melancholy is at its easiest to indulge. Zelda only fights her melancholy when she must, and it envelops her, now.

As she steps down to the ground floor, her attention is caught by Link’s bed—empty.

This makes her stop, and she stares at how it is still neatly made, like he hadn’t slept at all. 

She walks out the door, footsteps faster, and sees him—out in the grass, silently practicing with his sword. He lets out no more noise than a quiet exhale here, a swish of metal there.

He looks weary to the bone, and he looks _miserable_.

Something about this sight is too much for Zelda; anger and hurt and worry brims over, and results in her saying, loudly, “What on Earth is the _matter_ with you?”

He pauses, and turns to look at her. She doesn’t miss the way his shoulders tense.

“I couldn’t sleep,” he says. “Nothing is the matter.” His voice is short. His sword, limp in his hand, touches the tips of the grass. He studies it, avoiding her gaze.

“Since when is practicing with your sword at every possible moment the cure to insomnia, pray tell?”

“Does it really matter?”

“Of course it does.”

He looks up, catches her gaze for a second, and then his eyes shift back down. She sees him swallow. “Why? Why would it matter? It’s just sword practice.”

Her voice is brittle. “It matters because you are lying to me about something. Why don’t you _know_ that you don’t have to hide whatever it is? What is _making_ you like this?“

And then he looks up at her, and the expression on his face makes her breath catch—it’s screwed up, guilty, troubled over something clearly very real to him.

“Oh, Link,” she says, softer. 

“Don’t,” he says. He seems to be clashing with himself, now, warring over what words to tell her, and she sees panic, frustration in every line of him.

“Link,” she says, urgently, “Just tell me what it is.”

“I can’t.”

Zelda says, angrier, “Don’t you know I’d do anything for you? Why do you have to—hide away from me, like I’m diseased? We’re _friends_.” 

Something about that last sentence seems to really get at him, because he reacts, jarred and upset, with the words, “We _shouldn’t_ be!”

“ _Why?_ ” She shouts.

The world has shrunk, shrunk down to the two of them alone, here, now.

Link is pacing, shaking his head. Whatever he’s trying to contain—whatever he’s perhaps fought with for days, she thinks—seems to win. As though giving up, he slumps. His expression unnerves her; he looks sickened by himself. And then—

—he says, “Because it makes falling in love with you too easy,” and it sounds like an admission of defeat, of shame.

The world stops. Zelda stares at him. He looks away. His face is emptied, drained. And the world is not moving, anymore, not spinning; it is tethered to the space between them. All Zelda can feel is her heartbeat stuttering, in the silence.

In the silence.

_In the silence—_

—and then everything picks up again, and her shock is absorbed, and turns to something twisting, aching inside her. 

The world is moving differently, strangely now; the ground below her seems unsteady. As though the Earth is swivelling too fast now.

Zelda breathes in, and breathes out, and says, “Don’t run away from it. If you mean it, then don’t run away from it. From me.”

His voice is so quiet. “What would you have me do?”

Sounding oddly calm to her own ears—a distanced calm she does not comprehend—she says, “Tell me properly. Make me understand.”

Link inhales, sharply, and says, louder now, words coming faster, “If I do that—no. If I tell you _everything,_ right this minute, lay my bones bare for you, I might be sick. God, no, just—you should just read the diary you gave me. I can’t—talk about this. I don’t want to talk about it, I—what I’ve felt—this isn’t another curiosity for you.”

He moves, shaky, towards the stable, towards his horse. 

“I can’t do this,” he says again, as though to himself. He doesn’t look at her as she stands there, rooted, and watches him come back out riding his horse.

Zelda watches him ride away from her; she watches him go off to whatever forest or field he needs to exist in till he calms down.

And then she turns on her heels, walks back into the house, still mildly in disbelief at her own calmness. She extracts the diary from Link’s shelf, and sits down by the empty fireplace, and reads everything in it.

Over, over, and over.

* * *

Once, on Zelda’s tenth birthday, Urbosa had given her a gilded clockwork box. It opened to reveal a tiny ceramic girl, in a gauzey doll-dress, spinning as though dancing. Zelda had thanked Urbosa, but the gift instantly troubled her— made her wonder. The girl inside kept spinning and dancing, and was alone. Hyrulian music-boxes, she’d seen, typically had two people inside. A princess, but also a knight. 

Urbosa’s smile told Zelda that she had guessed at Zelda’s thoughts. “Curious why this dancing girl is alone, are you?”

Zelda, ten years old, cross, in a party gown smudged with grass stains from when she’d run into the garden that morning to avoid her handmaids, had replied, “What do you mean by it? It’s not funny.”

Urbosa’s voice had been so gentle, then, as she’d said, “It isn’t meant to be funny. Dear, sweet little Zelda, none of us are lucky enough to spend our whole lives without ever feeling lonely. Someday—perhaps for long, perhaps for short—you will be alone. You must understand, now, that you have to be strong, and good, and live knowing you honour yourself—so that the right people fill that aloneness, eventually.”

She’d stroked Zelda’s cheek. “This dancing girl, see her smile? She dances, but she is happy. You can dance, even in solitude. When this girl finds a friend, she will know friendship truly, because she understands herself, first.”

Zelda had worked through her words. “You want me to… understand myself?”

“You’re a clever girl,” was all Urbosa had responded with. 

* * *

In the journal, Link writes of his love for Zelda. Zelda reads all the words till they’re likely memorised, her fingers tracing his shaky handwriting. Link writes of never leaving Zelda’s side. Link writes, _I am so proud of her,_ and Zelda thinks, I never knew _._

Something inside her seems to ask, _did you know you loved him back?_

Zelda tilts her head at the unspoken question.

“I’ve known I loved him,” she says, into the silence, “for a hundred years.”

* * *

She’s still holding Link’s diary in her hands when he comes home, late at night. He’s calmer, but still clearly nervous. His cheeks blush as he sees her, still sitting by the fire, holding the journal.

There is a pause.

Zelda finally says, “Link—I’d like to talk to you.’

“Alright,” he says. He doesn’t seem afraid. Zelda cannot help thinking, looking at him, that he has never been afraid of anything for too long. She can tell he is not afraid of his feelings for her, anymore.

So he sits down, and the fire is warm, and they face each other. A beat passes, before Zelda asks, quieter, “What would be the ideal thing for you, here?”

He sighs. “That you forgive me. We move on. You allow me to continue being your bodyguard.”

Zelda holds the diary tighter, till she can’t feel the blood in her fingers. “I want something else.”

At this, his shoulders tense. He looks down. “Which is?”

At the bare question, Zelda is unexpectedly hit with a wave of nervousness. Her calm fades. Link looks up, and holds her gaze, and it reverberates in Zelda’s mind— _he’s looking, looking at you, and he won’t look away again, not unless you ask him to._

She tells him, “I—I want you to stay, too. But I don’t need to forgive you. I don’t need to allow you anything. What I want is the same thing you do not allow yourself to want. What I feel measures equal to what you feel. And—I wished on that star for you to find some peace. I want you to have your peace, and I want to be with you. And I can only hope the two wants go together.”

Link is still not looking away; he never broke away from her gaze as she’d talked. His voice seems to leave him. He seems unable to speak. So instead, he smiles at her. He smiles at her, helplessly, and it says everything.

“I love you,” she says, loudly, more for herself than anything, because she sees that Link already knows; they both already know. 

“I thought,” Link says, his voice like she’s never heard it before, “You’d leave to be queen.” He’s still smiling, simple and joyous and wide, and the sight of it makes Zelda feel more awake, more alive, than she’s ever felt. Nothing feels real. Everything feels real.

She says, “I have been happy. I have been happy, with you. If I ever am to be queen, I will insist on you being there, too. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” says Link.

He surprises her, then, by taking her hand, and holding it. He says, “Thank you,” and Zelda says, “Don’t be silly,” and he replies, easily, “I have always been silly. You must be used to it,” and she cannot help laughing, half in disbelief.

The kettle shrills. Zelda says, “Oh, I had put some water on for boiling.”

Link says, “I’ll make tea.”

Zelda beams at him and asks, “Can you make it every evening?” 

He raises his eyebrow, but from then on, he does.

* * *

A week later, Hateno Village celebrates midsummer’s eve. Fiddlers play music in the decorated, open square; a large table holds pies and cider. Children play and chase each other, the elderly smile and greet each other as friends, and the night air is fragranced with something festive, warm.

When Link asks Zelda if she wants to dance, she jokes, “I didn’t know you could dance,” even as she nods and accepts his hand.

He affably agrees, “Courtly dances, I never learned. But this kind of dancing is easier.” He holds her hand up as she swirls, and everyone around them seems to be smiling at them, but Link is only looking at her.

“This kind of dancing is certainly more fun,” Zelda replies, as they spin. The dimples on Link’s cheeks show as he grins. They dance in the moonlight, comfortably lost in each other’s presence, for long hours into the evening.

* * *

As they walk home late that night, she looks at him, as he hums some old song he’s probably making up as he goes. She thinks, _neither of us ever need to be silent, again. Not when there is so much to be confessed, sung; not when we know each other now._

She stops him by the arm, there on the bridge paces away from their door, and she kisses him. He’s surprised for only a second, before he kisses her back happily, his soft hand finding the back of her neck. 

As they break apart, she smiles at him. He beams back.

Truffle meows in the distance, as though affronted, and Link laughs even as Zelda turns her head.

So they both fall asleep that same night holding each other, with their terrible, terrible cat between them. It is most contenting.

* * *

“Teach me one of your songs,” she tells him, “and I’ll tell you a story.”

Link considers it. They’re having breakfast, with bowls of porridge on the table between them. “I’ll teach you a harvest song,” he decides. “What kind of story?”

“The story,” she grins, “of how I fell in love a hundred years ago. I’ve never told you about my side of it.”

Link looks wondering. He says, “I’d like to hear that, yeah,” and Zelda, resting her face on her hand, says, “We can keep exchanging stories and songs, and finding more as we do. I think it sounds perfect.”

He says, completely serious, “So do I.”

When he says it, it sounds like the kind of promise that Zelda somehow already knows, understands, they’re both going to fulfill.

“A promise, then,” she says. “I look forward to us keeping it.”

And they do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> !! i hope you enjoyed my story. your comments are welcome, thank you so much for reading this.


End file.
